measure, and fills the glass with amber whiskey.
We sit on his porch, in the rocking chairs—it must have been a set of four, his two and my two, because they’re nearly identical, but for little differences which only highlight the individual craftsmanship that went into them. The whiskey is smoky and tastes like fire and honey. It’s almost viscous on my tongue, and the ice is cold on my lips as I sip.
“What did you mean by that?” he asks.
I don’t have to clarify what he’s asking about.
“I think it was more just to see how I’d feel not seeing you every day.” I swallow hard— the truth is thick and hard to get past my teeth. “It was getting too familiar, seeing you every day. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a widow and a widower gettin’ to know each other, Nadia,” he says, his voice low and rough. “Not sure a body could take things much slower than we’ve been.”
“I know.” I shake the tumbler lightly, and ice clinks. “I guess it’s that I’m not sure I’m ready for there to be anything to take slowly.”
“Doesn’t have to be that,” he says.
“But it is.” I look at him. “We both know it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Do you want it to be that?” I ask, watching his reaction closely. “For there to be something to take slowly?”
He nods, and it’s as if his head is heavy, too heavy for his neck. “Yeah, I guess I do.” He sips. Stares out at the lake, which is lit only with slivers of moon behind a ripped blanket of gray fleece. “I said I like you. I meant it. Doesn’t mean it’s not weird, and scary. And hard. Doesn’t mean I know what the hell I’m doing. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t…feel what I feel. If you’re not ready, I get it. I can be friends. It’s all it is right now anyway, right? Coffee on the porch. A meal here and there. A walk around the lake. A drink of an evenin’.” Sometimes he sounds like he’s from a different millennium, an older time.
We drink whiskey over ice and listen to the crickets and the frogs, watch the last of the fireflies flitting on the fading warm evening.
“I like you too,” I whisper. So quiet, I wonder if he even heard me.
He did. His eyes slide across the space, to mine. Search me.
“You always hear that the first step is the hardest,” he murmurs, in his rough woodsmoke voice. “Maybe that one’s true.”
“Maybe it is,” I agree.
I finish my whiskey.
“Coffee in the morning?” He sounds hopeful.
And that does something very complicated to my belly.
“Yeah,” I say. “My porch. Six thirty.”
“Could you, uh, sometime, if you feel like it, could you make that bread with the little pieces of chocolate in it? That stuff was good.”
I laugh. “Pain au chocolat.” I’m glad he picked that one—I’ve never made it for anyone but him. “Yeah. I can.”
“I didn’t mean tomorrow morning.”
“I know.” I consider how long it would take. “We’ll have to see how early I wake up.”
I walk back home, and I feel him watching me. The sensation of being watched, looked at, seen—I don’t mind it. There’s no judgment in his eyes. No pity, either. Just warmth and understanding and the depths of a soul, which some part of mine seems to recognize.
Like when you meet someone, and it feels as if you’ve been friends before, if you were to believe in reincarnation. Similar to that, with Nathan. Only…far more complex.
I go to bed, and I’m thinking about Nathan as I drift off. That’s new.
It’s over coffee, the next morning.
I’ve made pain au chocolat, he’s made scrambled eggs and bacon in a huge cast iron skillet.
We’re done eating. Sipping coffee and watching the sun poke salmon-colored fingers through the rim of pines over the lake.
“There’s a restaurant, just outside town,” Nathan says, apropos of nothing. “A nicer place, I guess. On a lake kinda like this one. Do you want to have dinner there with me, tonight?”
I swallow hard. “I…I…” I search myself, and again the truth is a viscous, multilayered thing within me. “Yes, I do.” I lick my lips, run my finger around the rim of my mug. “This might be weird and stupid, but…could we drive separate?”
His smile is not mocking. “Yeah, of course.”
“I just—”
He holds up a hand to halt me. “What’d I say about explanations or apologies?”
I sigh,